Spring Boot fails to run maven-surefire-plugin ClassNotFoundException org.apache.maven.surefire.booter.ForkedBooter

Question

Running maven (3.5.2) build of a Spring Boot 2.0.2.RELEASE applicaton (generated by web initialiser with web dependencies) fails executing the maven

Answer 1

I was able to remove the maven-surefire-plugin from my POM after adding this to the top of my POM (inside the node)

    3.6.3

Why do I think this is the right answer?

• It specifies the version of Maven that Maven recommends using: https://maven.apache.org/download.cgi
• when you run mvn versions:display-plugin-updates it shows that it's taking the maven-surefire-plugin 3.0.0-M3 from super-pom, which so far seems to have this issue fixed.
• You don't have to manage individual plugin versions independently going forward. Just your minimum maven version which controls the super-pom version.